Christian Ethics in a Secular Environment

Can Christian ethics and a secular environment be reconciled? Here are some thoughts on the meaning of the “law” within Christianity and how it applies to Social Work ethics or even life in general.

Imagine that you see a sheep in a field. You see the sheep and exclaim “ah, there is a sheep in that field”. However, unbeknown to you, the sheep that you thought you saw was actually a rock in the shape of a sheep; and behind the rock in the shape of a sheep, there was actually a sheep.
-      Did you know that there was a sheep in the field?
-      Were you correct that there was a sheep in the field?
The statement was technically correct that there was a sheep in the field, but what you had in mind was incorrect.
Epistemology is the study of “how you know that you know things” and applies to ethics as much as anything else. As the sheep in the field scenario illustrates, knowledge is largely subjective, meaning that it is from our personal perspective.

Ethics and Social Work
Ethics in Social Work likewise are also subject to interpretation. Not every person will see all aspects of a given situation before them.
For example:
What does it mean to act in the client’s best interests? We may have a vague understanding of what it means, but how that is perceived and outworked varies greatly. This is largely due to our own interpretations.

Context plays a huge role in determining which ethical action to take. Depending on the context, what may seem in the client’s best interests may require an action that will vary from case to case. This calls for humility when working in these situations. We will never have all the knowledge in a given context. We may think we do at times, but one must remember that knowledge is largely from our perspective, even if we may think it is “common sense”… Knowledge is heavily influenced by our cultural background and life experiences. You can say that you believe there is a sheep in the field, but in actual fact, because of our fallible natures and limited knowledge, we should be aware that we could be very wrong. 
Depending on how much we can see of a given scenario or even how we see it from our perspective, no universal ethic will necessarily look the same. We may have a general understanding of what to do, just like we have a general understanding that there was a sheep in the field, but we are ultimately limited in our knowledge.


Even worse than working with a lack of knowledge, ethical practice may even directly conflict with itself. What if you thought you were looking at a sheep in the field and your client or colleague saw a rock in the shape of sheep? Both are looking at the same scenario. Who says who is right?

The Duck/Rabbit picture is a great example. Some people see a rabbit and some people see a duck. Both appear equally correct from each perspective. In an ethical dilemma one must be chosen and each choice with its own consequences.     
So how do we decipher what any particular ethic practically looks like when working with clients?  


Human rights v Moral rights.
Marie Connolly shares an understanding of practical Social Work values that I particularly like, which comes from a rights based perspective. She claims that there are two types of rights, human rights and moral rights. Human rights are concerned with the wellbeing of people, whereas moral rights are concerned about smaller issues in the grand scheme of things. From my understanding, moral rights which could come from asking “what is the right thing to do”, can become troublesome in Social Work because they are often from our personal values and don’t necessarily impact wellbeing greatly. On the other hand, human rights tend to be more helpful when making ethical decisions in Social Work. Instead of asking “what is the right thing to do”, a Social Worker coming from a Human Rights base may ask “what would be most helpful thing to do to produce wellbeing?”. Doing this enables us to sieve through the various decisions available.
An example could be a parent’s rights over their children. It is a moral right for parents to provide for their children, but if the children’s wellbeing is compromised, then the child’s human right comes into effect and overrides the moral right of the parent. It wouldn’t be helpful for the Social Worker or the child to value moral rights over human rights in this situation.

Difference in Christian thought.
Marie Connolly comes from a secular perspective, which I generally agree with. But what about Christians? Much of my upbringing consisted of encountering a variety of Christians that come from different schools of thought. Many Christians come from an objective law focus when it comes to moral rights and I did too for much of my life. Think back to the sheep in the field. An objective outlook would claim that there is definitely a sheep in the field, but a subjective outlook would believe there is a sheep in the field and would admit that due to limited knowledge, they could be wrong.

Congruence
An objective outlook is fine - we are all entitled to our opinion - but this type of Christianity may find it difficult to do social work in a secular context, because of the limitations that an objective outlook creates. I wrestled with this earlier on in the degree. How can I work in a manner that honours the “morals” of Christianity at the same time as “supporting” someone else’s opposing morals? Carl Rogers thought that a person’s psychological well-being was connected with how well they were able to live congruent lives. A person who is able to be congruent between their perceived reality and with their actual experiences, results in less anxiety. For me this has been true. The more I can reconcile my conscience with reality, the more at ease I feel with myself. This makes the place of ethics in Social Work and my interpretation of what these ethics mean to me, very important.


Laws made for man
The more I have studied the Bible I have found that I have misunderstood a huge part of the gospel, and much of what Jesus emphasized. Many Christians try to preach the Ten Commandments as a list of written “rules” from God. However, I over looked that Jesus Himself denied that these were “rules” per se. Jesus revolutionised the purpose of a law when he and his disciples picked heads of grain in a field on a Sabbath (which breaks the Sabbath law of doing no work). Jesus said that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27). Likewise I believe that laws are made for the benefit of people (therefore making them more like principles), rather than people being made for laws.


Fulfilled in love
To me, what the law produces is a motive of self-concern. E.g. if I follow this law then God will value me. However, more recently I see that Christianity teaches a rather different way of understanding morality and ethics.
The apostle Paul talked about how Jesus fulfilled the law, and summed up the law in what he called one word: “ For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. 14 For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”(Galations 5:13-14),
Living with the principles of dying to our selfish selves helps me to naturally look outward towards the needs of others, rather than following a law “just because”. This outlook ties in well with Human Rights ethics. Jesus was concerned about people’s wellbeing rather than a set of arbitrary rules. The “rules” or principles Jesus and the writers of the New Testament expected us to live by were for our wellbeing!

I have at times wrestled with Corrie Ten Boom type scenarios regarding lying versus telling the truth. For those who don't know the story, Corrie lied to the Nazis in order to protect Jews in her care. At times like these, I believe it is helpful to look at ethical dilemmas within their context and looking at things from a wellbeing perspective. Sure, it may not be right or helpful generally speaking to ourselves and society to be a false witness, but when it comes down to the wellbeing of another (like hiding Jews from the Nazis) wouldn’t it be more Christ-like to break a law for the wellbeing of another? I ask this remembering of course Jesus’ attitude to towards the law of the Sabbath. 


So how does this outlook relate to Social Work ethics? Just like with Social Work and ethical dilemmas, as a Christian, I will inevitably encounter ethical dilemmas. However, the difference is that I can work with more flexibility regarding what might be considered “Right” or “Wrong” in a given situation. I can live with greater congruence between my personal and professional values.

Following are some of the verses I found helpful to consider when thinking about ethics:

Matthew 5:43-44
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” 

Matthew 7:12
“So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them…”

Ephesians 4:29
"Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers."

Romans 14:4-6, 14-15
4 ”Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand…
 “14 I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself, but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean. 15 For if your brother is grieved by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love…” 

Mark 12:31
“You shall love your neighbour as yourself.”



I would also like to conclude with some words of wisdom from Captain Barbossa:

"The code is more what you'd call 'guidelines' than actual rules"

Faithfully Valuing the Limits of Scripture (PART 3 - RELATIONSHIPS)

Last post I used the example of progressive revelation as a sort of 'practice' engagement with the issues of faithful Scriptural interpretation, and being willing to reconsider our world-views. Progressive revelation suggests that God's purpose for Scripture may not be focused on perfect unbiased clear communication of cognitive knowledge. In fact, it demonstrates that God deliberately creates bias. This doesn't sit well with the modernistic components of our worldview, and so we tend to minimise this aspect of Scripture, and thus divert from a completely faithful approach to Scripture.

Next I want to start working through to the purpose of Scripture. But before we get to that, we need to explore what God's fundamental aim is in ALL His dealings with us. Often Christians use the same words to describe this topic, but haven't fully considered what these things really mean.

I'll always reiterate that my aim is not to challenge things for the sake of it. I just want us to be willing to challenge our worldview IF being truly faithful to Scripture and God requires it.

Background

First, some broad assumptions. I don't feel these need to be justified in this post, but feel free to use the comment section to disagree or help unpack these things more :) I think it is evident from Scripture and experience that God's fundamental aim in all things, is to express His character in as full and diverse a way as possible, so that other beings can immerse themselves in this expression and 'know' Him. Christ IS God, and contains the fullness of God as a person - something that all other expressions of God cannot come close to doing! In essence, then, all other expressions of God are actually expressions of Christ, and God's aim is that we experience and know Christ through them. This is true regardless of how clearly Christ has been cognitively identified as a distinct person - even in the Old Testament era, God's aim was for people to experience Him (which means experiencing Christ). 

Framed from our perspective, humanity's purpose has always been to experience Christ in a positive and reciprocal way - otherwise known as a relationship of love. This love involves an inclination of our heart toward enjoying this relational engagement with God's character (Christ), wrought by the Holy Spirit. God and Christ are unchanging, therefore the inclination of all God's people's hearts have been directed (by the holy spirit) toward the same person - despite the fact that the conscious experience / revelation of Christ's character varies enormously in its cognitive clarity. This is why Christ accused the Pharisees of not accepting Him - although they appeared to have the right relationship outwardly, they did not have the mark of the Spirit in their hearts - they did not love Christ unconsciously before He was revealed, and so they did not recognise or love Him when he was revealed. God wants us to have this relationship of love even when our conscious cognitive understanding of the details of this relationship are not clear. As it becomes clearer, we will rejoice because the relationship of love already exists in a less 'realised' form. 

But how exactly does a 'relationship of love' behave? What do we really mean when we talk about relationships? There are several interesting observations about relationships (as God's fundamental aim) that run against our 'modernistic' leaning to prioritise detailed cognitive information. Essentially, it makes no sense to conceive of a relationship in terms of a definable 'fullness' that we can attain to. To start with, relationships are ongoing - no amount of expression is enough for a person to have fully expressed themselves or been experienced by another. Also, the expressions and experiences of relationships are creative and dynamic - it is good for individual snapshots of a relationship to express varied aspects of the person rather than everything at once. Even focusing on the concept of 'fullness' in a relationship can be detrimental and insulting - we enjoy the interaction of friends or spouses in the moment, because it expresses who they are. Analysing the clarity of our perception of them through this experience misses the point entirely.  Finally, two people could potentially have the 'same' relationship with another person (i.e. two of my close friends, two of my brothers brothers, two of my elders, two children, two soccer opponents), and yet because each of THEM is different,  each relationship will look different. Even if I can't distinguish between the two relationships in terms of 'health' or 'fullness' or 'inferiority/superiority', the relationships will still be different (including the cognitive conscious interpretations). This isn't because each is imperfect - even in the theoretical (impossible) case where each person fully and accurately cognitively grasping me, the emphases and flow of awareness of each person's cognitive understanding of me will still be different. This isn't because each is incomplete, but because a static definable 'fullness' doesn't make sense, and so identical 'fullness' is impossible. It's just an integral positive aspect of what 'relationship' means. 

Cognition

Am I really saying that cognition is not very important to relationship, which is God's fundamental aim? Well, yes and no. To start with, there is dissonance between specific cognitive information and proper relationships, as discussed above. Cognition is merely one way to experience someone - just like no particular 'experience' or 'set of experiences' can define a relationship, so neither can a particular cognitive understanding. Even for God, complete intimate and perfectly accurate cognitive knowledge about someone (which I believe He has) does not mean He 'knows' a particular person in the sense that matters (He talks about 'never knowing' people who He casts out), and doesn't seem to be a big part of what He means when He does 'know' us this way. But on top of its problems integrating into relationships, cognition on its own can't even live up to what we expect of it, at least not for humans in this life. It is inherently inaccurate and extremely fallible due to both the inabilities of our mind AND due to deliberate strategies our minds employ! Our minds can only conceive of things that it has developed to be ABLE to conceive of - experience, background, developmental framework, personality and creativity types, what is suggested to us in the moment, all limit our abilities to actually think of or interpret certain things. Not only that, but our minds deliberately employ strategies that make life more efficient but extremely biased - e.g. confirmation bias. Our world-views, desires, existing understandings, etc ALL automatically / subconsciously heavily taint our interpretation of cognitive data - which is what they are designed to do, and which is what makes them useful in everyday life. 

God certainly has the ability to overcome and manipulate all of this as He sees fit when it comes to our theology, but experience and research suggest that He certainly does not do so within His church - we all still adopt a multitude of aspects in our worldview from our cultural surroundings which almost universally predict what our theology will be. And Scripture does not suggest God wants to manipulate this too much either - instead, the Spirit's primary activity seems to be in inspiring love in our hearts (as already discussed), and bringing the experience of the expression of Jesus to us in a more personal way. The Scriptural concept of 'mind' is actually closer to our modern idea of 'will' or 'intentions' or 'attitudes' than anything else, and not detailed cognitive information. And when Paul does speak of doctrine's importance, he uses much the same language as when he talks about works - important, but not God's fundamental aim or method. When we insist that God must routinely enable us to overcome our cognitive weaknesses when it comes to e.g. 'salvation doctrinal issues', we usually do this as a blatant attempt to protect our worldview (by maintaining the importance of detailed accurate cognitive information). God seems to have left us with a very flawed and tainted cognitive interpretation of our otherwise healthy Spirit-wrought relationship with Him - which, like everything He does, must be a deliberate decision for a good purpose. So particular accurate cognitive information is not as important to God as we tend to think. 

But I'm NOT saying that cognition as a process (fallibility and all) is unimportant to God. There are actually several ways that cognition is unique as a mode of experiencing someone, despite its limitations, and thus becomes uniquely  important. First of all, the process of cognition is still required for us to actually consider a relationship 'valid'. You can't enjoy and experience another person in relationship, when their expressions seem to you to be merely a bizarre set of unrelated random experiences. You must engage your cognition to form a picture (incomplete and evolving) of the other person. This picture also enables a relationship to persist when the experiences are limited in some way. And it enables us to grow in a relationship far beyond the concrete limits of our experience - We take our experiences and extrapolate back to what the person must (or could) be like, and where our relationship could take us, exploring this in our minds and 'experiencing' it in an abstract way. This cognitive picture has serious problems as mentioned above - but the process of engaging the cognition in this way is essential to relationships. Second, cognition is required for a relationship to mean anything to us. Relationships have qualities attached to them, like love and hate, which are necessarily driven to be expressed. This drive is partly experienced in our cognition, and requires the cognition to make deliberate decisions that express love or hate - if it is love, the drive is to seek further experiences of the other person, and to express yourself and your love back to them. If these drives are able to be expressed, the relationship quality is enhanced, otherwise it seems incomplete. Its not that you must cognitively understand what you love in detail, but love necessarily engages the cognition in its drive to express itself. This means love's expression may change as it 'discovers' itself more and more in a cognitive sense. 

Communication

Cognition has another purpose - it IS part of the expression of someone. For most of us it is a very inaccurate and distant window into our heart, but even God's perfect cognition is a poor representation of His heart - that's just the nature of cognition. But it is a window into the heart, an expression of the person, and so it is important in relationship to experience the other person's cognition. Which requires our cognition to function. The process of deliberately targeting the other person's cognition is called communication. This does not necessarily mean that the mode of communication is verbal or even cognitive, or that the ultimate distant aim is necessarily cognitive either. Communication is simply a means to an end through the use of targeting cognition.

Communication suffers from three extra steps of terrible and extremely variable accuracy when it comes to capturing cognition (EVEN IF the cognition of the author is 'perfect' in accuracy, like God's arguably is). The first step is translation of cognition into communication. Communication can NEVER capture the fullness of our cognition, because it would take years to do so in any 'language' (and I doubt any 'language' has the capacity to capture all the subtle nuances of cognition). Instead, communication must have specific prioritised cognitive targets and intended effects. The second step is the interpretation of communication, which obviously (naturally and appropriately) varies between different recipients. We NEED to introduce bias into our communication if we are to help another different cognition understand our cognition - and this should never apply equally to every individual. This means that IF we are attempting to generalise our communication, we must pay even more attention to prioritising our messages, accepting that efforts spent reinforcing one message to as many people as possible, will probably sometimes have opposing effects on other associated messages or on other individuals. The third step is the impact this cognition has on individuals - in terms of integration into their existing cognition, associated non-cognitive effects, interpretation of other associated cognitive messages, etc. This varies between individuals EVEN IF they all accurately interpret the intended cognitive message.  These three steps mean that communication can simply never be a 'pure' transmission of the authors cognition, and that biased interpretations MUST exist - but this is not a problem if this very bias works towards the best interpretation of the main intended message, or toward the main purpose.

God has also specifically elected to use communication (i.e. Scripture, prophecy, doctrines, prayers) as a one of the primary tools through which we interpret the hearts of others and reach out to them, and establish and grow a relationship of love with God. This does not necessarily mean that God has elected to use PURE communication toward these ends. I don't think this makes sense (as discussed above), but also progressive revelation deliberately included some very unbalanced cognitive presentations of God. God may wish one person to grasp a particular truth strongly at the expense of other truths, while he wishes something different from a different person. In fact, since God's intentions for Scripture are relational, He must have deliberately designed the particular pattern of bias in scripture for this purpose. The fact that a particular doctrine was useful for me at a particular point in time, to grow my relationship with God, does not mean it is the 'most accurate' or 'best' (in some other way) understanding of God, or that I will never change my beliefs to give my relationship better expression in the future. I may see flaws in a particular doctrine, but it may be just as true as my doctrine (just in a different way), and it may spring from a heart that is more established in a loving relationship with God than mine - making that 'wrong' doctrine fulfil its purpose better than mine. Just like our highly fallible interpretation of works and fruit are a useful but dirty window into another's heart, so too are our highly fallible interpretation of another person's doctrines. 

Summary

You can see that I'm contrasting two things here: the spiritual relationship of love is the important underlying reality. Whereas cognition (the conscious reception of God's expression) is a dim (but important) reflection of this love. We don't have to properly understand this love in order for it to exist - and some of the improper aspects to our cognition are deliberately designed by God, which must fit with His fundamental aim of relationship with Him. Cognition & communication have many flaws and fallibilities by virtue of their very nature, and are never intended as full encapsulation of the relationship. Instead they are meant to be based upon the relationship, partial expressions of the relationship, and dirty windows into the spiritual relational realities occurring in our hearts.

Comments? Questions? Please discuss below :) Do you agree that relationship is God's fundamental aim? Do you agree with my description of relationships? Are there other ways that our cognition is meant to function in relationship? Are there other limitations to our cognition or communication? 

Coming Soon...

• Next week I'll quickly talk about morality as very similar to communication - a flawed but important expression of cognition (itself a flawed but important expression of a person). I would have slotted it in here, but the post got too long!
• After that we get a bit more theological and discuss why God allows bias and ambiguity and confusion about His nature. This is, after all, something I keep insisting He is doing deliberately. This discussion will specifically re-address progressive revelation, but will also expand to the general problem of evil. I'll also (hopefully, space-allowing) talk a little about how faith relates to this fundamental love relationship (as I've been calling it).
• After that I think we'll be ready to summarise how God intends for us to approach Scripture. And then we can explore this in more detail over some of the phases of progressive revelation. 
• Then we can talk about the Jewish and Christian MIS-approach to Scripture and the problems its created. And the inverse implications that properly approaching Scripture can have. 
• Finally we can discuss some contemporary issues with this approach to Scripture in the back of our minds, to see how it informs our discussion and approach.

The series so far:

1. Introduction
2. Progressive Revelation
3. Relationships and Cognition (this post)
4. Morality and Evil
5. Coping with Evil I
6. Coping with Evil II
7. How to Read

Faithfully Valuing the Limits of Scripture (PART 2 - PROGRESSIVE REVELATION)

Last post I introduced the importance of  approaching Scripture honestly to allow it to speak to us as God actually intended. I expressed my concern that our subconscious faithfulness to our extra-Biblical worldviews has led to us (Christians) to add additional (unnecessary) 'requirements' to our approach to Scripture. In particular, modernism inclines us to approach Scripture as if 'detailed cognitive understanding' was of ultimate importance, because modernism requires detailed cognitive information about God in order to place Him in the grand scheme of things, and inform us how to relate to Him. We often simplify Scripture in order to allow it to fit with our worldview, and end up being faithful to a curated form of Scripture, rather than to the real deal in all its uncomfortable fullness (including those aspects that don't fit well with our worldview).

I'm not implying that these 'uncomfortable aspects' are the major themes of Scripture, and that there is little evidence for e.g. a consistent thread of doctrine, common unity in the faith amongst the authors, God's mercy in the OT and his judgment in the NT, etc. But no one needs encouragement to be faithful to these aspects! We need encouragement to be faithful to the uncomfortable aspects, because this may require us to challenge our worldview (and this is difficult because it gives us a framework for how we think and feel about, well, everything).

Our worldview may also have us believe that considering these things faithfully is actually violating the 'faith' God expects us to have. So I reiterate again, my aim is not to challenge things for the sake of it. I just want us to be willing to challenge our worldview IF being truly faithful to Scripture and God requires it.

Progressive Revelation

Today, as a kind of expanded 'introduction', I wanted to focus primarily on unpacking ONE particular aspect of Scripture that we simplify - the progressive revelation of God's character. It nicely demonstrates the uncomfortable complexity of Scripture, probably more than any of the other aspects I mentioned. And it opens up more discussions at once, than any of the others.

Most obviously, progressive revelation refers to the Scriptures as they were recorded. For example, the law was given progressively over the course of a generation, and not instantaneously. Subsequent additions were made as the Jews unpacked their culture and history in the promised land. There were many prophets, many of whom we have no record of, though some were recorded and eventually deemed 'inspired'. The NT was written over many years, and much of the church for years only had access to a mix of SOME of these materials (as well as many additional letters, which were lost over the years).

But I'm not just talking about new 'facts' being revealed about God over time. This is hardly controversial. There's also the progression in the amount and fallibility of the 'communication' available to God's people. Jews were being circumcised into the covenant community, and having faith that pleased God, for many generations PRIOR to Moses writing a word of the OT. They relied primarily on oral tradition taught by many varied 'rabbis' with varying degrees of training and experience. We could (potentially) argue that God preserved 'direct perfect and unbiased) communication through this diverse array of human instruments, but I contest this is unlikely, and we tend to argue this mainly to protect our worldview. The bottom line is that a huge number of godly saints did not have access to any 'direct perfect and unbiased' communication about God, or to the subsequent 'detailed cognitive knowledge' we deem so important today. The NT also did not exist for many years of the early church, yet these people were baptised into union with Christ. Again, they had access mainly to oral stories passed around (verified of course by the Apostles, but many of these Christians never heard directly from the Apostles - it was all third or fourth hand). And for much of the early history of the church, the OT was minimised as a source of useful instruction (either because it was deemed to be 'evil', or allegorical). So again, these believers had restricted access to any 'direct perfect and unbiased communication' about God.

Finally, and most importantly, Christ Himself - the fullest revelation of God, this time in a more 'relational' kind of communication - took his timing in coming, and even his first coming was only a partial revelation, while we await His return. Even in heaven we will continue to experience Him, meaning that He will not have finished 'expressing' Himself for eternity.

A Changing 'Image' of God

'Progressive revelation' inevitably extends to the broad picture of God presented by Scripture. We minimise this a lot to protect our worldview, but God presents a picture of Himself that markedly changes over time. Try it for yourself - read the Torah as a Exodus Jew would have read it, without any of our modern sensibilities (e.g. about Justice, slavery, women's rights, violence, etc) and without the rest of Scripture to 'balance' things out. This is just one example, but it becomes clear that in the initial stages of the OT God expects His Holy people to willingly and brutally massacre foreign children, without qualms. The God we see now (given the whole story from OT to NT) would expect people to have a heart which naturally flows out in efforts to STOP such behavior, and which would certainly question that command to massacre (was it really from God?), and at least have some qualms about it.

If we argue that God is truly unchanging (as He says), what we're saying is that for much of the OT, God blatantly restrained Himself from revealing these incredibly relevant and important 'balancing' aspects of Himself,  and thus was deliberately creating bias in how His people perceived Him. And it was not just the general populace - it was the judges, prophets, priests, holy warriors, kings - God expected His people to perform in a way which is only consistent with a lopsided view of God.

God may have been slowly weeding this deliberate bias out with subsequent revelations, and working toward a more harmonious 'accurate' picture of His unchanging Himself. But we are still left with the NT apostles differing quite radically on their doctrinal emphases. While this might not seem as drastic as claiming that they held to contradictory doctrinal 'facts', it's still saying that the God that James saw was rather different to the God that Peter saw, that Paul saw, that John saw, etc. We could go so far as to suggest that they disagreed over aspects of God's character or priorities. A common example is the relationship between works and salvation - as a broad generalisation, Paul placed works as a definite outflow of salvation, Peter places some works as a requirement of salvation (e.g. baptism), and James and John placed works and faith alongside each other. Again, we could protect our worldview by drawing attention to the 'balancing' beliefs that the apostles held, which minimised the eccentricities they communicate in Scripture and make their theologies harmonious - or sometimes, when we can't find the doctrines we're looking for, we just assume the apostles held them. But I want to value the Scriptural tendency to communicate the eccentricities very clearly, sometimes more clearly than the harmony. Scripture doesn't seem as concerned with this 'harmony' as we are.

Dividing Scripture

This discussion obviously raises questions about 'dispensationalism' vs 'covenant theology' vs other variants. As you've probably guessed, I think both views are simplifications. Progressive revelation contains components of both.

There is a consistency to the way God relates to people throughout the ages - through multiple, varied, deliberately biased (and incomplete) expressions of Himself. I'll delve more into this in later posts, but the point for now is that 'progressive revelation' is NOT saying that some 'phases' of revelation were superior to others. All of history has been in constant a state of incomplete revelation, where God has NOT yet made known his fullness in a cognitive sense. Instead, every incomplete revelation naturally combines with others over time / exposure to produce a more and more complete communication - hence the term 'progressive'. The flip-side is what I think is an obvious conclusion from any straightforward reading of Scripture - that our view of God and how we behave as His people is meant to change, between e.g. the Exodus and now.

The difficulty is trying to describe how we are meant to approach this change. Some attempt to arbitrarily divide Scripture into sections that apply in different ways to us (and some don't apply at all). But I think this approach is not faithful to Scripture. There is nothing in the Bible to suggest a division between some parts of the OT which are relevant to us today, vs those which are not. It was always considered as a whole by every Biblical author. Even when we try to 'divide' it up, we run into trouble - e.g. we want to keep SOME of the laws about money and property, but not others. We want to keep SOME of the laws about sex, but not others. We want to keep some of the basic laws of the 10 commandments, but want to avoid the punishment associated with disobedience. Jesus and Paul both affirmed the permanent usefulness of the WHOLE law as a unified unit, and condemned the legalistic use of the WHOLE law as a unified unit. There is very little suggestion that how we fundamentally relate to the law is meant to change now that we are in the NT era - the verses commonly used to support this position tend to demonstrate instead that our relationship toward the law was ALWAYS meant to be a particular way (including in the NT era). So if our approach to Scripture has not fundamentally changed, and all of Scripture is approached in a consistent way, how does the Bible expect our behaviour as God's people to change over time? Its because as revelation progresses, the clarify of our vision of God naturally progresses as well, even though our approach to every revelation is fundamentally the same and unchanged. And our relationship to God assimilates this change.

Summary

A faithful approach to Scripture must value the fact that detailed cognitive knowledge did not seem like a priority for God throughout much of the history of His people. It must value the fact that God seems to deliberately create bias in the minds of His people, which has evolved over time. What does it look like when we value these things? That's the sort of question I'm hoping to answer in this series.

OK more comments please :) How does this discussion make you feel? Are there other ways that progressive revelation manifests itself? Or other questions that it unearths? Do you think God is pleased when we consider these things?

Coming Soon...

Next week I'll start a little more logically:

• I'll discuss that God's fundamental aim in us is a relationship of faith, and that everything (including Scripture) works for this fundamental aim. I hope this will pave the way to discuss the usefulness and limits of cognition and communication (two important aspects of Scripture) when it comes to relationship. 
• From there we will discuss WHY God seems to not only allow the intrinsic weaknesses of cognition and communication, but seemingly encourages it (demonstrated nicely by e.g. progressive revelation). This requires us to engage with the broader issue of why God allows ANY confusion to exist about his nature (e.g. the existence of evil, sin, etc). 
• I'll discuss how the faith relationship works in this context (i.e. in the real world of confusion regarding God's nature). And we'll specifically explore how the faith relationship responds to three phases of progressive revelation (the Torah, Christ's first coming, and the possibility of further revelation). 
• I'll discuss how the Jews approached Scripture in an unfaithful way and the problems this created, and then re-visit how we Christians do the same. And then I'll discuss some implications for Christian unity, discipleship, missions, etc. 

A lot to get through! It'll take time...

The series so far:

1. Introduction
2. Progressive Revelation (this post)
3. Relationships and Cognition
4. Morality and Evil
5. Coping with Evil I
6. Coping with Evil II
7. How to Read

'Faithfulness' vs 'Historical Criticism'?

In line with the series I'm currently writing about Scripture (and yes, the next post is coming, eventually...), check this article out:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2014/12/inerrancy-historical-criticism-and-the-slippery-slope/

In summary:

1. The modern inerrantist tends to equate 'being faithful to Scripture' to 'affirming inerrancy'.
2. As a consequence, any attempt to critically analyse the inerrancy of Scripture is automatically pitted against faithfulness. Those who deny any truth in the Bible are blatantly unfaithful to it, while those who hold to inerrancy but define 'errors' slightly differently are being mildly unfaithful to it.
3. This is demonstrated nicely in the straight-line graph, where faithfulness decreased as historical criticism increases.
4. Actually, we all accept a degree of 'historical criticism' as being necessary for 'faithfulness'. For example, we may accept that a complete lack of awareness of historical context may result in slight errors of interpretation. Hence the most literal straightforward 'inerrant' interpretation may actually be mildy unfaithful to the Scriptures as they were intended to be read. 
5. Hence the first paradigm is wrong. Faithfulness actually maximises at a specific degree of critical analysis.
6. This is demonstrated nicely by the curved graph. Only after a certain point does faithfulness start decreasing with more critical analysis.
7. Once we accept this more accurate paradigm, we can begin discussing things a little more meaningfully. Where exactly does the point of maximal 'faithfulness' occur? What makes us decide 'thus far and no further' when it comes to our optimal degree of critical analysis? These are useful and important things to discuss, rather than dismissing and ignoring them as 'unfaithful' questions.

What are your guy's thoughts?

P.S. For those who worry, I certainly don't agree with everything this author writes. But I think he's refreshingly genuine and honest (more than many evangelical bloggers) when it comes to faithfully approaching Scripture...

Faithfully Valuing the Limits of Scripture (PART 1 - INTRODUCTION)

Those who read my articles / comments will probably recognize that I am slightly divided in my approach to any controversial topic- I try and uphold both modernistic cognitive knowledge AND post-modern soul-oriented subjectivity. I can get agitated whenever I see either component emphasized in isolation :)

In a similar way, I have slowly become more and more concerned with the way we Christians tend to approach Scripture. I feel like we forget to approach it in a way which is faithful to an honest view of God, and His intentions for Scripture. Sometimes we forget that God's primary aims (relationship, holiness, joy) are not particularly related to Scripture as an end to itself (i.e. Modernism). And other times we forget that Scripture and theological debate are nevertheless essential tools to do those more fundamentally important extra-scriptural (Postmodern) things.

I'm going to write a series of posts on what (I think) it means to faithfully approach Scripture. I'm know I'm likely to upset some tightly-held beliefs about Scripture - but my aim is not to question things for the sake of it. I just want us all to approach Scripture honestly, and with a willingness to change our beliefs about it, if that's what 'being faithful' to it requires.

Background

To me, any faithful and honest approach to Scripture will do three things - be true to what Scripture says about itself, be applied consistently to make sense of every aspect of the text (as a whole, and as individual texts), and gel with the picture of God presented itself (when approached this way). It is not a simple task to stay true to all three principles, although I think it must be possible (even if we never know whether we are doing it 'right') if the Scriptures are inspired by God, or are simply intended by God slightly useful in any way.

However, we make this task impossible by adding subconscious extra-biblical requirements to this list. Humans do this to every interpretive action we undertake - from appreciating the beauty of the sunset or a massage, to studying physics and mathematics and music, to reading letters or the American Constitution. So there's no surprise we do this to the Bible.

Our worldview is the sum total of not only our perceptions (both cognitive and non-cognitive e.g. emotions, about the world and ourselves i.e. our identity and purpose), but also meta-data about those perceptions (such as how they relate to each other, how important or useful or integral each perception is, and how we decide these things). Obviously a lot of this is not consciously performed, but it definitely happens, and becomes more obvious when we deliberately explore it, IF we allow ourselves to admit it. Our worldview does the same with Scripture - it tells us how to give it value, emphasis, and purpose, etc. And by doing this it adds requirements to our approach to Scripture.

For example, modernism is a common component of many people's worldview in the Western world. Modernism has many aspects (including e.g. a focus on the human ability to forge its own destiny, via Free Will / Science / Humanism / etc), but a the big factor I'll talk about today is how it assigns purpose, value, identity, and relationships on the basis of detailed cognitive information. The more detailed cognitive information is available, the better modernism can supply purpose, value, identity, and relationships. Modernism thus provides a subconscious drive to seek clear and detailed cognitive knowledge. If a pure modernist wants to value and relate to God, their worldview adds the requirement that He readily provides clear and detailed cognitive information (for which Scripture is seen as the ideal conduit), and will be unable to grasp any purpose/value/identity/relationships that God and/or Scripture INTENDS to provide in the absence of such information.

Mixing Worldview and Scripture

When we struggle to bring all these requirements together with our worldview, we tend to fudge something to make it work. Unfortunately, my observation has been that we tend to accidentally stay faithful to our worldview, and to the obvious statements Scripture makes about itself - thus leaving the second principle (and the third, as a consequence of it) to be fudged. We end up 'simplifying' Scripture in our minds to a form which we CAN apply all the remaining principles to (including our worldview). We minimize the uncomfortable complexities and maximize the comfortable aspects with are coherent with our preconceptions.

The reason we are so faithful to our worldview, is that it has been instrumental in integrating everything we have ever experienced or known - our identity, our understanding, values, purpose, etc. To question our worldview literally raises the possibility (unlikely as it may be) that all these things have no basis. Our world would fall down around us. In addition to this, for religious people our worldview is integrated into our very concept of God and 'faithfulness' - to question it (even indirectly by questioning our consequent understanding of Scripture) is not only potentiating the collapse of our world, but the collapse of (what we consider to be) 'faithfulness' to God. 

There are several examples of scriptural characteristics that conflict frequently with our worldviews, and are thus 'simplified' to a form which allows us to continue with our worldview. The difficult 'doctrinal' passages are often split into those which align with our view, and those which need explaining away - and this is then done, often successfully, but not without minimizing the contribution these passages bring to the Scripture, while maximizing the contribution others bring. Some will say that this 'difficulty' results from addressing issues God doesn't want addressed, but this itself is minimizing the contribution these verses bring to Scripture. Others label it an attribute of our fallible interpretation, rather than Scripture per-se. Fair enough, but I don't think you can separate it from the fabric of Scripture itself so easily - there are other characteristics that suggest God was TRYING to avoid perfectly clear communication. Many of these 'opposing' views of God seem to be very clearly expressed and deliberately NOT fully integrated into a systematic theology, and the emphasis certainly isn't on reconciliation.

And even when we manage to simplify our view of God to be conveniently consistent in terms of doctrine (through our bias in emphasizing a subset of Scriptures), its hard to escape the changing morals He expects from His people - not just between Testaments, but within the same Old Testament Law! And then there are the blaring contradictions in terms of historical 'facts' and conversation, something the authors and readers didn't seem concerned about. And some very strange ways that Paul and Jesus mis-quote and re-interpret Scripture, suggesting they didn't view it quite like we do today. Then there is the fact that both Judeism AND Christianity existed and flourished before the 'Scriptures' per-se existed, and the Scriptures are never presented as the basis for a relationship with God.

Summary

If we believe God truly inspired Scripture, it means every characteristic is deliberate and aids His purposes, even if some of those characteristics make it difficult for us to know how to approach it, and challenge our fundamental understanding and approach to the world, ourselves, knowledge, life, etc. These difficult characteristics need to be considered just as 'Scriptural' as the more comfortable aspects, and made sense of and embraced just like the others we find convenient.

In this series I want to explore where the second principle of Scriptural faithfulness (being true to the text's characteristics, including its uncomfortable complexities) actually leads us, and which of our extra-biblical worldview 'requirements' can and can't stand alongside it. My aim is not that we will be free from personal bias or worldviews (I don't think this is possible), but that we will be free to consider Scripture as it really is BECAUSE we are not afraid to see and challenge (and attempt to change) our worldview IF God exposes some weaknesses.

Lets get the comments rolling :) How does this discussion make people feel?  What goes through your head when you consider 'challenging' your view of Scripture? Are there other ways we wrongly 'simplify' Scripture?

Next Time...

• When the dust settles (LOL), my next post will explore one simple observations about Scripture, that many  feel the need to minimise (rather than accept at face value). It'll be a kind of extended introduction, just to help contextualise some of what I've been saying, and to get us more familiar with the kind of questions we'll be considering. 
• After that I'll start on a more logical progression from the basics (God's fundamental aim in everything), to His specific purposes for Scripture, to the Jewish and Christian misuse of Scripture, and finally some implications for Christian unity and missions.

The series so far:

1. Introduction (this post)
2. Progressive Revelation
3. Relationships and Cognition
4. Morality and Evil
5. Coping with Evil I
6. Coping with Evil II
7. How to Read